The present invention generally relates to personal entertainment systems and, more particularly, to a system and corresponding method for selecting and providing music and other entertainment products to a user based on biological responses of the user.
Musical preferences vary based on individual taste as well as a person""s mood. The type (or genre) of music listened to will frequently vary with the listener""s mood. For example, when a person feels like dancing, they might want to listen to music that has a beat or rhythm. When a person is feeling sad, they may want to hear blues, etc. Also, when a person wants to obtain a certain mood, or emotional state, they may want to listen to a particular type of music. For example, when a person wants to feel energetic, they may want to listen to rock music, etc. Music can control how a person acts or feels. A person""s mood or state of mind can frequently be inferred from readily measurable physiological conditions, such as pulse, blood pressure, temperature and brain wave activity.
Presently, when a person wants to listen to a particular type or piece of music, they have to manually place a media storage device (e.g. compact disc, tape, record) onto a media player and then start the media player before they can listen to any music. Also, if a person wants to hear music from a variety of genres or artists, they will have to manually place several media storage devices onto the media player at different times in order to hear the variety they want. Depending on the mood of the person, or the situation the person is in, this can be an aggravating process. For example, if a person originally listening to blues selections wants to listen to a different type of music (e.g. jazz), they will have to manually stop the playing of the blues music; manually select the jazz selection; and play the new musical selection. If, for whatever reason, the user doesn""t like the new jazz selection, the process of changing the music selection has to be repeated. The continual manual selection and playing of several music genres can become time consuming.
Thus, there is presently a need for a system and method for automatically selecting and playing music or other media selections based on the individual moods, emotions, or preferences of a user.
Broadly stated, the present invention is directed to a personal entertainment system that is programmed and calibrated by the biological response of a user based, at least in part, on media stimuli provided to the user. In an exemplary embodiment the stimuli provided to the user is music. Based on the persons physiological state (i.e. mood), after hearing a music selection, a user preference table is generated associating or correlating the physiological state of the user with respect to the music provided to the user. In this fashion, the entertainment system will only play the music preferred by the user in response to the detected physiological state of the user.
In application, the personal entertainment system comprises a media player; a sensor operative to detect biological parameters and generating a control signal in response to the detected parameters, the sensor being operably coupled to the media player; and a processing element which associates the control signal to at least one type of media preference, and causes the media player to provide media stimuli based on the control signal.